This is actually quite a detailed article which contains quite a bit of what I want to cover here. The writer starts off with displaying some pretty alarming chemophobia, but ends up with a slightly more considered perspective on how to view the chemical substances that are around us day in, day out.
The misguided attempts of some activists who do not have sufficient understanding of chemistry or science to add anything to the debate are also mentioned.
Steven Novella from the excellent The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe (SGU) wrote a very nice piece on how mistaken the Food Babe is in her quest to try and stop "harmful toxins" in processed foods from killing us all.
There is one major toxin that does untold times more damage than any amount of aspartame, gluten, sodium benzoate, sodium monoglutamate, or high fructose corn syrup you could ever reasonably eat. It's in drinks that most people consume every week, or even every day.
Alcohol. Ethanol, to be precise. This flammable, harmful liquid is not suited to our metabolisms that are specifically designed to handle aqueous (water based) liquids, not non-aqueous solvents. The fact remains that anyone who drinks more than probably about a unit of alcohol a week is getting way more "toxic" damage from that than all the artificial colours, flavours and preservatives they eat combined together. I say this because peer-reviewed scientific studies have found most of these artificial ingredients to be safe, and we see everyday in our hospitals the damage done by alcohol consumption.
And yet, somehow alcohol gets a free pass. Probably because it's "natural"! Somehow it's more important whether something's natural than whether the data actually shows it's safe. So goes the naturalistic fallacy.
Hmm...as a chemist myself, the Food Babe's notion that any compound that contains an atom, species or functional group which is harmful in isolation, must be regarded as harmful in itself, is utter chemical illiteracy. Everything hangs on how the "harmful" species is when bonded. Or whether it is "free". The beauty of different types of bonding is that they can render certain groups inactive until the right conditions come along.
A couple of examples. An oft-quoted cure for heavy metals poisoning is the use of a chelating ligand such as sodium EDTA. (EDTA stands for ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid, this is the sodium salt to get the powder or solution form) to bind the heavy metal atom in a tight grip of nitrogen and oxygen lone pairs. The resulting complex contains heavy metals, and yet is harmless to the metabolism in the bloodstream. It can naturally pass out of the body without the heavy metal becoming dissociated into its harmful form. If you've had heavy metal poisoning you won't complain about the heavy metals still being there, if it's been deactivated.
Cyancobalamin molecules contain cyanide. Thing is, this molecule is also used in dietary supplements. It is a form of vitamin B12. VITAMIN.You know, those substances that tend to be somewhat vital. To try and reduce all this nuance down to the level of describing all chemicals containing potentially toxic constituents as "toxins" is very ignorant. I can't emphasise the number of intellectual shortcuts this person takes in reaching their conclusion. The ground these shortcuts take is so bumpy that it leaves the vehicle itself unsound upon reaching its destination.
There is a great parody page called The Chow Babe, I highly recommend it...
What Doctors Don't Tell You.
It makes a mockery of other people's genuine attempts to inform the debate by carefully searching for the facts rather than just shouting off on what they've already decided is true. Outrageous.
Quack merchants like WDDTY seem to be insistent that I must be a "pro-vaccine pro-GMO shill and troll", highly paid by the likes of Monsanto. I'm going to own those accusations by liking and following these great Facebook pages:
https://www.facebook.com/GenMods4Monsanto
https://www.facebook.com/provaccineshills?fref=ts
It's apparent that WDDTY advocates think that anyone who disagrees with them MUST be getting paid by the gestalt entity that is Big Pharma/Monsanto. Yeah, those "cheques" really make a difference I can tell you.
Instead, can I ask if it could perhaps be the fact that the wooster quack logic of WDDTY is unscientific, casually committing many logical fallacies, and is full of cognitive errors?
No, because their opinions are "facts".
The Foodbabe's latest pet hate is GMOs. So I guess at some stage we'll have to over AGAIN all the evidence which shows they are perfectly safe. Oh well, until then...
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